Opinion

Fire Festival honors Chicago's spirit

Posted October 28, 2014 5:01 am

A recent letter to the editor labeled the Great Chicago Fire Festival as an insensitive "celebration of misfortune that brought a great city to its knees." I disagree. Lame as it turned out to be, the festival was supposed to be a celebration of misfortune that could not bring a great city to its knees. The tragedy that added a star to the Chicago city flag was immediately followed by a massive effort to rebuild the city from one that had a population of 300,000 before the fire to one with a population of 500,000 nine years later. That massive effort was led by the people of Chicago and its surrounding areas, who did not sit around in lawn chairs waiting for FEMA to come to the rescue. There is no way to portray the Water Tower as a ruin of a once great city.

Lou Eisenberg

Buffalo Grove

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